Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Marketing’

A friend in marketing recently said, “You always write about social media I have to start using. Are there any tactics I can ignore?”

Yes, there most certainly are!

Below are four social media tactics you can forget about for the foreseeable future.

The newly relaunched MySpace. Last month the site unveiled a beautiful visual interface that got lots of social media experts buzzing. However, consumers aren’t talking about it yet, so you don’t need to think about it.

Foursquare. I know I will get heat for this recommendation. But, if you’re not on Foursquare, you probably don’t need to be. Mainstream consumers are hesitant to use check-in services because of privacy fears. Plus, there are more convenient ways to check-in, like Facebook and Google+. I bet Foursquare remains niche.

QR codes. Marketers are much more excited than consumers about QR codes. Some shoppers use them for price comparisons, but there are apps for that. Marketers’ dream that consumers would scan QR codes on ads to learn the story behind their brand just isn’t turning into reality.

Vine. Marketers and the media are excited about Twitter’s new video app, Vine. It lets people create and share 6 second, looping videos. I recommend sitting on the sidelines and letting someone else figure out how to leverage Vine to drive sales.

I will keep tracking these services—and everything else in digital marketing—so you know what to put on your To Do List and what to put on your Don’t Bother List. Stay tuned…

Over the past few months, a lot of interesting research has been done about Twitter by Pew, Cornell University, Yahoo, and others. Below are 7 fascinating facts that should influence how you market via Twitter.

Twitter is not a social network. Almost 80% of connections are one-way. Only roughly 20% are reciprocal.

Twitter functions quite a bit like a mass media. .05% (yes, that’s way less than 1%) of the users generate 50% of all tweets. 22% of users generated 90% of tweets.

Timing is beyond critical. 92% of retweets happen in the first hour after a tweet.

Most tweets do not create dialogs. Only 1.5% of replies to tweets lead to further replies.

Twitter’s number of users can be misleading if you’re not careful. Only an estimated 35-40% of accounts are in the US. 40% have never sent a tweet, 25% have no followers.

Approximately 8% of Americans use Twitter, 2% use it daily. While that’s a tiny slice of the population, it can be a very attractive target market, depending on your product.

African Americans and Latinos are twice as likely as Anglos to use Twitter. Twitter is a very interesting way for brands to reach minorities.